Wednesday, April 01, 2009

On the practice of (almost) everyday voodling

"In order to grasp the formal structure of this practice, I have carried out two sorts of investigations. The first, more descriptive in nature, has concerned certain ways of voodling that were selected according to their value for the strategy of the analysis, and with a view to obtaining fairly differentiated variants: 'pataphysical practices, practices related to urban spaces, utilizations of everyday rituals, re-uses and functions of the memory through the "medias" that make possible (or permit) everyday practices, etc. In addition, other investigations have tried to trace the intricate forms of the operations proper to the recompositon of spaces by familial practices, on the one hand, and on the other, to the tactics of the art of voodling, which simultaneously organizes a network of relations, poetic ways of "making do" (bricolage), and a re-use of everyday structures."Reflecting on the nature of fluid interfaces in everyday life, Sam Renseiw pondered on the question of the development of a sixth sense's in future voodling. Passing reflecting puddles, various navigation vehicles and even crossing a fluid gap, Sam captured formal structures the old fashioned way. View the unfolding promenade with parallel Exurb by clicking here or on the links above. (patafilm # 675, 03'11'', 25.4MB, Quicktime/mov - other versions at Blip.tv) Today's Bonus Lumiere Video features traffic on a fluid interface. (Lum # 189, "fluid interface " 01'00'', 7MB, Quicktime/mov)

6 Comments:

I still have this terrible practice of downloading your films onto my (newish) iphone and then not commenting back on your site. I drag you around with me on journeys. Cart your little gems up and down and around this little island (and a few to France, too, recently!). And it's always beautiful and inspiring to be in such good company.

For April, I'm going to try and stop re-devicing (my word..I think) your work and watch from 'home' - and hopefully comment. So I begin here.

A few people on the continent were asking who they should be watching. So I pointed and showed a few, including, of course, Spacetwo. We drank coffee (well, I did), and watched and discussed and it was all really quite wonderful. If only you'd been there, you would have done a much better job at elucidating than I did. But they were grateful nonetheless.

It's only just occured to me, and I don't know why it hasn't before, that one defining quality of your voodles is the camera position, which is invariably quite low. In this video in particular, perhaps because of its quotidian nature, this suggests the point of view of a child, which of course suggests an inquisitiveness, a different view of and relationship to the world to that of the adult: closer to the ground, apparently more subjective as it tends to lack the wider, higher viewpoints. 'Nobody Knows', a 2004 Japanese film on television here late last night, had the same quality. It was about a family of children abandoned by their mother and left to fend for themselves - the world is viewed ostensibly from the POV of the children and the cinematography lingered with childlike curiosity on detail. I didn't watch the whole thing, it was quite long, and quite late. The trailers here make it seem a lot more mawkish than it seemed to me last night: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0408664/

robert: thank you so much for the kind words. yes, would have like to be in provence too .did the screening go well? hope the links work for the iphone, as the bliptv conversion fro .m4v format is change to flash ( did not yet re-upgrade to pro) but will try to upload .m4v own conversions again as i was not sure if many would use them.

steven: also touched by the ozu comparison.. now he really is the master. (and i am still wondering how he achieved his smooth travellings, so low.) yes, i apparently seem to like the low angle... it becomes much more childlike-now. even with the panasonic ( still to huge and cumbersome) . i guess my contax swivel is why i can work freely and with satisfaction, as i capture what i would like to see( or have seen) from a more appropriate angle. after watching parts of " nobody know" ( thank you net for youtube uploading) i did realise that i might indeed have a chidlike approach to the POV... and that it is not only because of the camera. but then again, there is more to it: the used angle in my more consciously framed recordings of performance pieces, i.e ( the circle camp series, august/sept 2007 > http://a4.video.blip.tv/2060000683648/SamRenseiw-patafilm482circleCamp08635.mov ) do not have a child's angle. the intent was more to be firmly embedded in the action, and convey that impresion as lively as possible. ( it does seem to work surprisingly well... might re-edit the parts into a propper dvd one of these days...

anyway i guess the analogy tatami shot > voodle embedding might be fitting, afterall. thank you for pointing it out.... that is actuaklly the fun of voodling: it hapens so fast, that i mostly do not have the time to reflect properly on intent and consequenses.

Here we have the tradition that the United States state of Missouri is the "Show Me State", a reference to the notion that someone from Missouri believes only in the evidence of her/his eyes, and not in the assurance of mere words.

"I'm from Missouri!" the expression goes, which means, loosely speaking that the speaker has a skeptical turn of mind, and wants to be satisfied.

I am not from Missouri, but I have a bit of "show me" in the idea of fluidity here. Rather than focus on fluids in their metaphoric context, I focus on the waters here and there. The clouds in the puddle. The crossings of watery ways.

I think that sometimes where I live and Copenhagen must be very different places, because we live here from drought to drought, and not from ocean to rain to ocean.

Yet the bricolage of images is not about place per se, or about anything per se, but instead is about nothing--and everything, and the fluidity of process. I like that notion from process theology--the idea of God an endless becoming. Galaxies follow their thermodynamic laws, molecules fly apart--and we see the fluidity of things that in our own terms we might otherwise see as absolutes.

The keyboard which begins the underlying song is a piece by Kaer Trouz, a woman who plays with vigour and imagination--and her keyboards, remorphed into another purpose, shows the point of fluidity in a rambling, rumbling, electronic way.

About Me

'Pataphysics, an absurdist concept coined by the French writer Alfred Jarry, is a philosophy dedicated to studying what lies beyond the realm of metaphysics. Defined as: "The science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes the properties of objects, described by their virtuality, to their lineaments". SPACETWO : PATALAB has functioned in this spirit since 2005 as a dynamic, experimental visual / spatial research laboratory run by SAM RENSEIW. Laced with quotes and useful links, Patalab02 is a forum for subtle, intriguing, complex, enchantingly moving imagery experiments exploring body-space morphologies and other architectures. Enjoy! All posting are videos. Click on the image or the appropriate link in the text to enter. For a view of older videos, see the archive link.